A brief history of Oregon historians

Where are the historians of Oregon? Why do we hear so little about them?

We get plenty of stories about the state's novelists, memoirists and journalists, but a minimum about the historians. Why is that? Are historians simply as uncharismatic as last year's bird nest? Have we just overlooked or forgotten them?

In this regard, Oregon mirrors larger American cultural landscapes. U.S. historians rarely attract the national or global attention poured on novelists and biographers.

Check names of international award winners. The list of American historians as Nobel Prize winners is nonexistent, zilch, nada. Except for scholars whose first interests are science or economics, no one with a history background has won a Nobel Prize. As in Oregon, the most prestigious awards very infrequently go to historians.

Enough questions and finger-pointing. We need more answers and information about Oregon's chroniclers and their writings worthy of renewed attention.

In the 19th century, Oregon historians or would-be historians devoted their pages primarily to describing new peoples, landscapes and experiences they encountered coming into the Oregon Country. Bona fide historians were in short supply.

But Frances Fuller Victor changed that. She was the first Oregon historian to gain regional and national attention. Victor came to Oregon in the 1860s after earlier stops in New York, Michigan and California. A decade later, separated from her husband, Victor returned to California, where she labored more than a decade in the history factory of prominent Western historian Hubert Howe Bancroft before coming back to Oregon.

While in Oregon, Victor completed a major work, "River of the West" (1870), in which she used the life of merry mountain man Joe Meek to unveil Oregon's early history. Lively, anecdotal and controversial (especially in its handling of the missionaries), Victor's book attracted wide attention and numerous readers.

Later, Victor signed on with Bancroft and wrote large sections of several of his books dealing with the Pacific Northwest and the Far West. Those volumes, thoroughly researched and straightforwardly written, remain useful and accessible to general readers.

At the turn of the century Eva Emery Dye replaced Victor as Oregon's best-known historical researcher. But Dye turned her prodigious findings toward other ends, producing several works of historical fiction. She invented scenes and dialogue in such works as "McLoughlin and Old Oregon" (1900) and "The Conquest" (1902), the latter of which dramatized Lewis and Clark and featured a romanticized, embellished Sacagawea.

Making a mark

In the early 1900s academic and other scholarly historians were beginning to gain a modicum of attention. Chief among these was Joseph Schafer, a student of famed Western historian Frederick Jackson Turner, and author of the first scholarly history of the region, "History of the Pacific Northwest" (1905).

At the same time, the Oregon Historical Quarterly came on the scene. Launched in 1900 under the able editorship of Frederic G. Young, the journal remains, after 111 years of continuous publication, an attractive source of Oregon's history for scholars and lay readers.

In the 20th century no one surpassed Stewart Holbrook as Oregon's most popular writer of regional history. Drawn to what he called "lowbrow" or "non-stuffed shirt history," Holbrook churned out dozens of lively stories about lumberjacks, hobos and other grass-roots characters. In some of his best-known works, such as "Holy Old Mackinaw" (1938), "The Story of American Railroads" (1947) and "Dreamers of the American Dream" (1957), Holbrook vividly displayed his word mastery, charismatic characters and strong opinions. These narrative strengths gave staying power to Holbrook the "lumberjack Boswell."

More recently, Matt Love, on the coast; Diane Goeres Gardner, down the valley; and Gale Ontko, out in eastern Oregon in his five-volume Thunder Over the Ochoco series, have worked popular veins and gained widespread attention.

Wide appeal

Another historian, Alvin Josephy, did what few Oregon authors have been able to achieve. His writings appealed to academic and general historical readers alike. A New York journalist, Josephy discovered the West and like a smitten convert bought a house in eastern Oregon and became intrigued with Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce. From that fascination came Josephy's monumental "The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest" (1965). It remains, by far, the most important work on that much-discussed topic.

Although academic historians failed to capture the wide readership of Victor, Dye and Holbrook, they have turned out since the mid-20th century numerous valuable studies of Oregon. Chief among these was University of Oregon historian Earl Pomeroy. His first-rate analytical and interpretive Far Western history, "The Pacific Slope" (1965), merits continued attention for its probing evaluations. More recently Carl Abbott of Portland State and William G. Robbins of Oregon State have established national reputations for their writings on urban and environmental history, respectively.

Richard Maxwell Brown, Jeff Ostler and Peggy Pascoe of the University of Oregon likewise authored strong academic studies, and so have Gordon Dodds and David Johnson of Portland State and Kim Jensen at Western Oregon.

Concurrently, the state has spawned in H.W. Brands and Debby Applegate two of the nation's most-touted historians. As prolific as any recent academic historian, Brands, a graduate of Jesuit High School and now Dickson Allen Centennial Professor of History at the University of Texas, has written or edited nearly 30 books since his career began in the mid-1980s. He is particularly known for stirring biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, among many others.

Applegate, a Clackamas High School graduate, achieved her fame by way of one major, very impressive book. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for her "The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher" (2007). Readers and contest judges were particularly impressed with Applegate's splendid writing and her imaginative research.

One other recent and expanding source of Oregon history deserves notice. In 2006 several Oregon scholars launched the Oregon Encyclopedia Project. Bill Lang and Rick Hardt of Portland State and Linda Tamura of Willamette University, along with their chief editor Marianne Keddington Lang, are heading up this rapidly expanding online source for Oregon history and culture. With more than 1,000 entries, the project is now the go-to source for historical information on the state. Its brief entries on notable persons, events and places appeal to both scholars and lay historians.

These names and titles reveal that, most of all, Oregon has produced more than a few significant historians and histories. Perhaps if bookstores, editors and other champions of state and regional cultures become reacquainted with these Oregon historians and their important writings, the state's annalists will receive more of the attention -- and accolades -- they clearly deserve.

Richard W. Etulain is completing a book titled "Abraham Lincoln and the Oregon Country in the Civil War Era." His centennial history of Northwest Nazarene University will appear in 2012. He may be reached at baldbasq@unm.edu